garment was wet as if an attempt had been made to wash it. One witness against him claimed to have seen Hilsner, at a distance of , in company with two strange Jews, on the day on which the murder was supposed to have been committed and on the spot where the body was found. Another witness claimed to have seen him come from that place on the afternoon of 29 March and to have noticed that he was very much agitated. Both the prosecuting attorney, and the attorney for the Hrůza family, Karel Baxa, made clear suggestions of ritual murder. Testimony had proved that Hilsner was too weak to have committed the crime by himself. Still he was sentenced to death for participation in the murder, while his supposed accomplices were undiscovered and no attempt was made to bring them to justice. The prominent Czech nationalist scholar Tomáš Masaryk, professor of the Charles University in Prague, intervened on behalf of Hilsner; he filed an appeal to the supreme court, citing technical errors in the trial. The supreme court ordered a new trial, to be held at Písek in order to avoid intimidation of the jury by the mob, and the influence of political agitation. On 20 September 1899, a few days after the first trial, Hilsner was confronted by hostile fellow prisoners, who showed him some carpenters working in the courtyard of the jail and told him that they were constructing a gallows for him. They demanded the names of his accomplices, and said he could thus obtain a commutation of his sentence. Hilsner, terrified, named Joshua Erbmann and Solomon Wassermann as those who had assisted him. Being brought before the judge on 29 September, he declared that this statement was false. On 7 October, he reiterated the statement, but again recanted on 20 November. Fortunately for those he had accused, they were able to prove perfect alibis, one of them having been in jail on the day of the murder, while the other proved, from certificates of poorhouses in Moravia which he had visited as a beggar, that he could not possibly have been in Polná on that day. The Marie Klímová disappearance case Meanwhile, Hilsner was accused of another murder. Marie Klímová, a servant, had disappeared on 17 July 1898. A female body was found on 27 October following in the same forest as the body of